1968 Anacin ad defines housework as "a mild form of torture"

Michael sez, "From a 1968 ad in Life: 'Making beds, getting meals, acting as family chauffeur -- having to do the same dull, tiresome work day after day -- is a mild form of torture. These boring yet necessary tasks can bring on nervous tension, fatigue and what is now known as "housewife headache."'

You joke, but several prescription migraine medicines are close relatives to LSD. As a side note, some guy with bad migraines heard about this and figured shrooms had LSD (not true), so tried them. Word is he found it puts migraines into remission for weeks or months. He got his chemistry wrong, but it turns out shrooms and imitrex are in the same family.

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

maybe I’m reading too much into the about-to-get-it-on looks between the couple in the bottom of the ad, but . . . is this advertising targeted directly at the trope of “not tonight honey, I have a headache”?

‘Minutes after taking Anacin your headache goes, so does its nervous tension and fatigue’…and you can rush into the bathroom to spend two hours constructing an elaborate up-do and slip onto your best dress, before honey comes home to press in close, asking for a little ‘sumpin sumpin’, but you’re feeling fine after a long day of minding the children, drudging about like Cinderella and taking two fortified aspirin and maybe a Lysol douche, so you say ‘sure, why not? I’m soooo bored, even sex sounds good to me. Come ‘ere, tiger, let me help you with that tie.’

There’s a photo by Julius Shulman that has a perfect couple in their perfect mid-century home. Every time that I see it, I hear him saying, “Drunk again?” and her saying, “I wouldn’t drink if you weren’t fucking your secretary.” The secret lives of Samantha and Darrin.

Hence, the need for “A Room of Her Own”in lieu of the big pharma ad campaigns which go on today. 1968/2011 the more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, and if the extreme right wing gets their way women and girls will be kept bare footed and pregnant, subservient to the man of the house whom g-d has declared the ruler and interpreter of “his” word. Read “The Handmaid’s Tale” for a chilling look at the future that has become all too close for comfort in the U.S. Palin, Bachman, et al, are the moles for the uber-Christian, male hierarchy they believe is ordained in the Bible.

we’ll have the Christian Taliban wrapping women up in freedom-gowns long before Muslims have any actual power in our country, and keeping Muslims out and properly sequestered will be their “in” just like it has been with pretty much every single reactionary self-destructive psychotic wave of bullshit.

Vondasue, you have little faith in the U.S. military if you really fear Sharia law or whatever outside influence has you shaking in your boots today. Whatever happened to “The Home of the Brave” not to mention simply unhysterical thinking? It’s sad you think we are so vulnerable and don’t get on a Tea Party rag about our president opening the gates of hell, etc. Chill, for g-d’s sake.

I’d like to second TNGMug here; it’s really not necessary to play my-mom-was-tougher-than-your-mom. I stay at home with my two kids who are diagnosed with Asperger’s. There are days when I would trade everything I have for a ten-hour day working at something rewarding and the chance to come home to kids with whom I can a conversation that isn’t about Swedish pop stars or Tamagotchi. Or even for a freaking Anacin.

While all the women of yesteryear were fighting for homemaking to be considered a profession, women now do all those duties (some with help from their partner) including the cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc… while holding down a full time job, and it’s no longer a fluff job either.
I suspect, under stimulated was the problem…